WTH is Neocolonialist Environmentalism? Todd Moss Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2023
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
One of America's greatest engines of growth is fossil fuels – cheap, reliable energy that jumpstarted the industrial revolution and paved the way for the security and prosperity we enjoy today. Others will not be so lucky. Many African countries lack energy security and are reliant upon foreign aid and international organizations that impose environmentally correct conditions on assistance. Indeed, rather than affording African nations the same pathway to prosperity that Western countries used, the left has decided that ‘what is for me is no longer acceptable for thee’ and is pushing green energy on the African continent. Africans like clean energy as much as the next guy (Kenya has geothermal, Ethiopia has hydro) but others (Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria…) are forced to rely on natural gas. But the future of Africa and engines of growth are uninteresting to climate crusaders, who embrace neocolonialist conditions for aid to Africa, all the while jetting about in private planes. Instead of forcing climate terms on critical Africa assistance programs, as John Kerry is intent upon doing, or degrading the efficacy of the Power Africa initiative, perhaps the US and Europe should focus on alleviating poverty, truthfully.
Todd Moss, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, is the Executive Director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a fellow at the Center for Global Development, and a nonresident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute and the Colorado School of Mines. He has a substack called Eat More Electrons.
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.1 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell is talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what |
| 0:22.1 | it's all about? |
| 0:36.2 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:37.5 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:39.5 | Mark, what the hell is going on? |
| 0:41.4 | Okay. |
| 0:42.4 | So the other day we had a podcast about the left's war on convenience, how they are trying to |
| 0:46.0 | take away your refrigerators and your gas-powered car and your gas-powered stove and your |
| 0:51.4 | gas-powered lawnmower and everything that, everything basically |
| 0:55.1 | in your life that works. They are waging war on. Well, this week, we're talking about the left's |
| 1:00.4 | war on Africa and how they don't want those people to ever have those things to begin with. |
| 1:05.6 | Let me just give you a few stats about Africa so we can put this on because I know most of |
| 1:09.5 | us don't focus on Africa every day, |
| 1:11.1 | but news flash desperately poor continent with very little access to energy. And the left wants |
| 1:17.9 | to keep it that way because we're talking about green neocolonialism here. So two-thirds of Africans |
| 1:22.7 | have no access to reliable electricity. Per capita energy consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is 185 |
| 1:30.1 | kilowatts per hour. In Europe, it's 6,500 kilowatts per hour. In the U.S., it's 12,700 |
| 1:37.5 | kilowatts per hour. So an American fridge uses more electricity than a typical African person does. Okay. This is a desperately, |
| 1:46.2 | desperately poor continent. They need cheap, reliable fossil fuels to grow their economy. And so the |
| 1:54.0 | Western elites here in Washington and Europe and other capitals, all the developed countries |
... |
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